idostuff

Quick background to this little project.

We’ve had an idea for a Trike for a few  many years now. A friend has bet me £20 he will finish a wooden bike before I’ve got the Trike done. So now the race is on.

The Trike is unusual as it’s bike based but will carry 3 passengers. It’s also going to have suspension!

Here’s a quick look at how my working  wooden model of the Trike suspension works. Bungee and beer can shocks. Hee Hee.

Thanks Dave for the rough road simulation.

With my friend concentrating on “Safety First” I think I’ve got a good chance.

Wooden Skid Lid

I plan to put more details up, let me know if you want to know more. I need some encouragement.

Just a quick one.

The Theme I’m using must be from the dark ages, it hasn’t got the code in the CSS to format the border and caption to images inserted in to a post.

A quick search, and I found http://designm.ag/tutorials/wordpress-caption/. Easy to follow  instructions.  Just copy the code, from the Kubrick theme, and paste it in to your theme CSS.  When it’s there all sorts of weird and wonderful things can be done to the formating.

Hey presto it works.

This isn’t the route that the DIY sheds are forcing most people to go down.

I’ve finished building a staircase up to loft conversion in a style to match the existing stairs and banister rail. The original Victorian stairs are, I think, Canadian red wood. It’s been stained dark and varnished many years ago.

Victorian Stair newel and spindels dark wood finish

Replica Victorian Newel and spindles, bare wood

 The grain on the original is really well defined with contrasting deep amber against almost black.

To get this same coloring on modern yellow timber is something that DIY sheds don’t cater for. If you use common products straight from the tin the results will be bland areas of patchy color.

 Now I’m going to put you off the modern products that the regular DIY outlets sell. The varnish you commonly find is advertised as “Quick Drying”. It’s acrylic based, it does dry quickly but isn’t particularly hard wearing, with little resistance to moisture. For a quick tarting up job it’s fine but I want a finish that will last. It’s available in various colors but using it to get a consistent finish that the beauty of the wood can shine through is a nightmare. It doesn’t flow as the drying process starts so fast, brush strokes are almost impossible to eliminate and you can’t keep a “wet edge” on anything but a really small job. Without a “wet edge” you end up effectively adding a second coat to parts of the job and so you get an ugly patchiness.

 That’s my opinion anyway, please free to comment and disagree if your experience is different.

The Varnish you need to find is “Polyurethane”. It’s the stuff that can up to 24hr to dry, this means its workable for longer so you can get an even finish. The brush strokes can also disappear as is flows into an even finish after it’s applied. The down side is, it can run if it applied too thick. The trick is: Thin coats well brushed out.

I had to find polyurethane varnish/stain on-line as it’s not available in my local shops. I found “Rustins” is widely available, the supplier I found was www.Tools-Paint.com

The other product I’m using is Wood Dye (This did confuse me a few years because when I was lad it was called Stain. Stain is what they now call colored varnish). This stuff is a thin colored liquid that soaks in to the wood, unlike varnish that sits on the surface. There’s good and bad versions of this about. I think cheaper versions have the color more as a solid in suspension that doesn’t soak in properly. The dye I’ve used is from Wickes and has Napilia as the solvent.

The Method

1. Prep the wood. It has to be bare wood and well sanded and clean. Take some time over the prep, make sure all traces of glue are removed from the surface.

2. Apply the wood dye. I use a brush to cover the surface and get in to the nooks and crannies

   

   Dark Oak Wood Dye on yellow softwood

3. After about 5 minutes letting the dye soak in, wipe off any excess with a cloth. ( The dye soaks in to grain of the wood, the more open the cell structure the darker it gets. The dense part of the grain takes very little of the dye, so the contrast is enhanced.) Lookin Good! The “Dark Oak” stain is almost black at its darkest but still nearly yellow on other parts of the grain.

4. Open the windows up and come down from the solvent based high…. Joking – make sure you’ve got good ventilation coz it’s powerful stuff.

5. When fully dry. Apply the varnish. I’ve used Mahogany colored, to give a rich amber colour to the lighter parts of the grain.

   

   Newel part Dyed part Dyed and varnish Stained

6. Finish off with a couple of coats of clear polyurethane varnish, not forgetting a light rub down with wire wool between coats.

 This is how I’ve achieved the result I wanted, after some testing. Addition coats of dye and or stain would modify the results.

 It’s a lengthy process but the results are spectacular and long lasting.

 I hope you find this technique useful. Let me know how you get on.

If You want to comment on environmental issues to the product I’ve used, PLEASE DO.

Oh Yes! Of course I want my Wordpress theme to be AdWords and Widget ready. But hang-on what does it actually mean. 

Well, widget ready seems to mean widgets can be added to the side bar using a simple click and drag interface.  If it’s not “Widget Ready” widgets can still be added by adding code to the .PHP files.  The theme I’m using isn’t widget ready so, for now, I’ll leave the subject of widgets. When I’ve delved in to the .PHP I’ll come back to it.

AdWord Ready   - The theme I’ve got has AdWords already displayed. Always on the lefthand sidebar, on single posts there’s a box in actual text, on the home page there’s a “Link Unit” etc.  AdWords came up as soon as I activated the theme.

Something to change straight away. The AdSense Publisher ID used is the theme designers so any revenue will go straight to the designer not myself.  

A quick look at how the AdWords are included -

1. Each AdWords position in the blog has its own .PHP file . These files includes the code that AdSense generates when you create an advert. For more about the code check out Google AdSense.  Note: AdWords is for advertisers, AdSense is for Publishers.
2. PHP section files call up the AdSense PHP File
3. The PHP page files then calls up the PHP section – you then have a page with AdWords displayed.

The AdWords are mentioned in the CSS stylesheet but only with the instruction to add a margin at the bottom.

For me to have my own AdSense adverts with revenue coming to me, I had two options.

1.  Just change the Publisher ID code in the AdSense .PHP files. The Adword format would not change but the revenue would come to me.

2. Create new adverts through AdSense to match my revised theme. The procedure in AdSense generates a few lines of code that can be copied and pasted in to the relevant AdSense .PHP  files.

I went for the second option and soon had it sorted. I just had to make sure the new Adverts where the same size as the old ones.

Now I’m at a stage where I’m happy, for now, with the look and function of the blog.  It’s time to get a few pages sorted on the Web Site.

I’ve had a couple of days playing around at this and have made reasonable progress.

I downloaded a theme that was close to what I need and dived in to the CSS to make the changes.  The CSS only changes the size and appearance of the various elements. To have full control over what actually ends up on the screen will take changes to the .php files.

I should point out that Ive been working on it “live” with no back-ups or safety measures in place. This means if I cock-up I’ll be stuffed. The only precaution I’m taking is to just modify one line in the CSS at a time.

To explain what I’ve done so far an image will be useful. So here it is (first image post)

he he – that’s worked

So this what I’ve done, remember all the changes I’ve made are in stylesheet.css.  This is accessed from the dashboard – Appearance – Editor.

1. Change the Header Background. The Header section of the stylesheet calls up a graphic. The Graphics are located in an image sub directory of the  theme. Using the CPanel file manger I downloaded and then modified it in photoshop. After up-loading the new graphic (just plain white), the revision shows up when the blog is viewed.
2. The Head text was now white and therefore invisible. To change this I had to find where the colour is specified in the stylesheet and change the Hexidecimal colour reference to black. It took some locating the right “Header H1″ reference but after some trial and error I cracked it.  For more on the hex codes I found the Wikipedia Web Colors article useful.
3. In in similar why to changing the Header Graphic, I changed the background to the main body. This graphic repeats down the page to give the two coloured columns. You can see on the Graphic above, It doesn’t quite match the text column widths, a later adjustment sorted this out.
4. In the Sidebar section of the stylesheet I eventually found the right colour reference to change the text to white.
5. Adjusting the column widths was tricky as the positioning of them relates to each other.  This again took me much trial and error.  I eventually cracked it when I realised the Sidebars are defined initially as the same size but  this is overridden further down the stylesheet with specifications for ”sidebar left and side bar right”. It took some tweaking to get the Left side bar a tighter fit for the AdWord size.
6. Padding and Margins needed looking at to get the text sitting well in the columns. Something it took some research to get my head round. PADDING – is space on the inside, just like traditional margins on a sheet of paper, MARGIN- is space on the outside, like a picture frame around a painting.  E’ it’s a Topsy turvy world.

By this time I was coming to the conclusion that the CSS Stylesheet for the free theme I had downloaded was very messy. I’m sure it could be tidied up and simplified.

My advise on this would be – “Find a well coded theme to start learning on”

However I’ve got it looking close to what I’m after and no doubt I’ll tweak it more some other time. Or I might even start again using my advise from above.

I didn’t think getting the Wordpress theme to my liking would be a long job. I’ve revised my thinking since.

What’s a Theme? The theme defines how the blog looks, its the page design that then calls up the content from the entries made in the database.  That’s the first bit I had to learn.

There’s more than one page design. The actual number of page types can vary according to the theme. Each page is made up from sections (or areas) that are called up. e.g. Header, content, comments, side bar, footer. The pages and sections of pages are defined in .php files

Each section (or area) is made up with some common elements e.g. Text styles, colours. These elements are defined in Style Sheets. The style sheets are .css files

So to change the overall look – I need to start at the lowest level and work my way up

1. .css stylesheets, will change appearances all the way up
2. .php sections, will change the content of sections (or areas)
3. .php templates (pages), will change how the .php sections are put together to make a page

So it looks like I’ve got to get a good grasp of CSS and PHP. This is not going to be easy!

There are however, alternatives

1. There are loads of free themes available to download
2. There are themes available to purchase
3. There are designers out there who will put a bespoke theme together

I had a look at some of the free themes, they are easy to download as zip file then open up through the Wordpress dashboard.  Of the five I’ve looked at two came up with errors, when it’s free you take your chance. There is one I quite like that says it’s optimised for SEO and AdWords. 

Before I look at buying or commissioning a theme I’m going to have play at customising this. Two goals in mind, getting the right look for my blog and learning some of the programming involved.

Before I dive into it using the theme editor on Wordpress I’ll investigate what off-line options are available.

Update:  I’ve had a good look round and found a few options.

Highly Recomended – www.yvoschaap.com/wpthemegen/ This is free on-line generator . I really wish I had found this a few days ago. In fact I might give it ago as the code for Theme I’m working on seems to be all over the place.

www.artisteer.com Downloadable 1month free trial software

www.themedreamer.com This is plugin for Dreamweaver so Themes can be worked on easily with WYSIWIG.

Running a Holiday Letting business is a real option for us. It would involve buying a property then running it as a business. Considering actually doing it involves weighing up the desire to have a property in a specific location for our own occasional use against the effort and financial aspects.

I like to work on figures so I’ve created a spreadsheet to model the business. The spreadsheet puts together the income and costs, then makes a simple comparison against alternative investments. What it doesn’t do, is to factor in the desirability of owning and using the property. I also need to consider the time and effort that would have to be put in.

If you are looking at this sort of investment, you might what to download the spreadsheet and plug your own figures in.

Furnished holiday let viability calculator

Brief explanation of the spreadsheet

Enter your figures in the blue cells

Purchase price /deposit, used further down to factor in mortgage payments and other potential investments.

Fees and set up, add on purchase costs and 1 off set up costs

Price per week, check out the competition and set likely prices

Occupied, enter f for a full week, 1 for a 3 day short break and 2 for two short breaks in 1 week. The part week rate gives the price for these.

The graph shows the income per week. The sample figures I’ve used indicate a property that is either unpopular or under marketed.

Variable costs Booking related, Agents fee, cleaning per occupancy,gas/electric per year estimate if fully occupied.

Fixed costs, unavoidable overheads per year

The results of this section are in the Basic Balance Box.

Having the figures in this format allows a quick assment various scenarios. What if we can increase prices? What if we market it better to increase occupancy? etc.

The rest of the sheet is me playing about with considerations for me to throw in to the mix. Answering questions like.

1. What if I just kept the money in a high interest account.
2. Whats the growth on the property value
3. How does it compare against two residential property lets
4. Whats the cash flow implications taking in to account tax and tax credits.

If you get this far down on the sheet let me know and explain it some more.

We’ve not come to any decisions yet but at least with this we can back up our thoughts with some hard figures.

Searching for and then comparing buy to let mortgage deals is a hell of a lot harder than it used to be. Although the availability of residential mortgage products has increased, lenders are avoiding Buy to Lets.

Little competition in the market has lead to the lenders devising even more devious way of disguising how expensive they are. It’s taken me plenty of head scratching to work out the best deal for me.

I started with the normal comparison site searches then delved deeper into the details of the better looking offers. I also tried the more specialists sites and a broker. 

All the info I fed in to a spreadsheet so I could quickly asses and compare the products using my own criteria. The spreadsheet takes into account.

• Initial Rate
• Initial Rate period
• Follow on rate
• Arrangement fees
• Valuation fees
• Other fees eg. broker
• Loan interest to rental income criteria

I could develop the spread sheet further but if you want to try it out for yourself, here it is-

Buy To Let Mortgage Comparator Spreadsheet   

I enter the necessaries in the green cells and the results are given as running and averaged totals over 1,2,3,4 & 5 years. I’ve based my decision on these figures. 

It doesn’t give the monthly payment as it a pointless figure for a comparison.

I’ve left some figures in the download so you can see how it works. The interest to rental part was really useful to set the loan to value for the Natwest criteria.

Have a play and let me know what you think.

I’ve ended up going for the Natwest option, It helps that I’m an existing customer and get free valuation and legal costs. The Bank of China option looks really interesting if you can get to one of their branches to apply directly. I’d like to hear of any experience you might have.

Good luck with your search.

Friday night 9.30. Retired to garage with laptop, a can beer and some excellent Robert Plant (Mighty Rearranger). And I’ve just had a WOOO! moment, nice when they come along. The track All The Kings Horses is based on the Zeplin track Bron-Yr-Aur. Why WHOOO? Because that’s the track I used on my Mind movie. I’ll write about the Mind Movie another time.

Anyway I’m in the garage combining two things at once, doing some writing whilst enjoying a spot of relaxing. I really need to get a few ideas down and I’ll see now it goes.

I had a busy week, looking and analysing the long list from the last post. I picked a few things to prioritize, in different areas, that I could combine.

Mortgage a property – went all over the web looking for the best mortgage deals, thought about it, did the maths and made the application, accepted in principle.

Holiday Let Business – The misses is really keen on the this and its on Goals list. I’ve developed a nifty spread sheet to model the business and assess viability. It’s worth careful consideration of potential pleasure derived weighed against financial expediency. So I’ve got myself another post to do on that.

Oh, just thought. This post is extremely diverse. Against all SEO advise. But what the Hell.

Other Financial investments – I’ve read and am still processing the “Liquid Millionaire” book from Stephen Sutherland. An immediate conclusions is to shift my Stocks and Shares ISA to web based platform. With this I’ll be able to sell the funds and hold the proceeds in cash. Still within the ISA wrapper but out in a holding position for when the the markets go tits up again. This took a fair bit of thinking time as well.

Dying and Stairs – This job starts with laborious sanding, followed by laborious dyeing. So plenty of thinking time! (approx 10hrs) YES get in there, successful application of time

Tenant moving in – Sorted the paperwork, switching utilities etc.

Fixed a tenants toilet – Just needed doing, but a good opportunity for a chat and a catch up.

Resurfacing bath- ordered the “Tuby” kit after researching on web. This look like a good one to write up in the DIY category. Asked the tenant when’s the best time to have her bath out of action for three days? An important question to ask when you have 3 young kids.

Trike Building – Had a play with the lathe, turning a little jig to re-drill the wheel stud holes at 100mm PCD… Pure Pleasure:)

Job Earning – Turned down a job from a Client. The advert artwork he wanted was to support a customer profile article in a magazine. I spotted all the Hallmarks of a Clever Magazine. Scam I’d seen versions of before. I did a bit of research and let him know. He’s canceled the advert booking and spread the word. (note to self: write a post on scam under I do professional Stuff, how to recognize the scam. Trade Journal editor contact for write up and link)

My client and others will be saving a few thousand quid as a result. I lost out a couple of hundred quid but bought bought a massive amount of Good Will. If some one says “ you cant bank good will” they can shove it. My AGB Marketing Support Business live on Word of Mouth, My Customers are my Ambassadors.

What I have neglected is writing, hence Friday night with beer and some sounds. Peter Gabriel “UP” now.

Looking back, it’s really has been not just a busy week but a productive and positive week.

Maybe this personal development stuff really is working, kind of without me noticing at the time.

Doing Less Negative Stuff and Doing More Positive Stuff seems to work when I’m considering how to fill my time, doubling jobs up and WOW! The Mind Movie.

Enough for now. 11 o’clock time to sink in to PG.

Do Less Negative – Do More Positive , DLN-DMP

A fantastically simple concept to improve life and well being.  I like distilling ideas down to a simple essence. This is a concept I’m likely to remember and apply.

Last night I went to pub, just for ONE pint. Four pints of Hobgoblin later, I ended up going to bed late, having disturbed sleep, feeling rough and annoyed when I eventually crawled out of my pit. I’m now determined to remember and apply the DLN-DMP concept  to the little decisions and reap the benefits.

If I had applied this concept last night, I would have been happier, healthier and more productive today. It’s so simple.

Why did I choose to drink more than intended? Because the decision was based on the short term desire to drink more of a very tasty beer. I wasn’t think of the decision in terms of improving anything. I didn’t have this little bit of insight/knowledge to apply.

It’s a concept I’ve only just read about, this also makes a powerful argument for me to read more of the right kind of books. 

This particular book I just finished today, whilst in the bath, in recovery mode. So all credit to Stephen Sutherland and his book “Liquid Millionaire”.  The book’s tag line is “How to make millions from the up and coming stock market boom”.  I wasn’t expecting to learn more than the possibility to get a edge on financial markets, however the book gives great deal more. This particular little gem came on page 182 and comes under the  heading ” How to Live Your Dream Lifestyle Now”. 

Stephen suggests identifying the things that cause stress, unhappiness, anxiety or make you feel out of control, then do less of those things. At the same time identify the things that make you feel good (I’m sure that means, not the superficial taste of beer) and do more of those things.

I might be having a slightly different take on this idea but as it’s so simple, it lends it’s self to being applied easily to every day decision making.  

I should say the rest of the book makes a fascinating read. I’ll be reading it again shortly to make sure I got the concepts straight and I’m ready to assimilate the knowledge.

So Many Thanks  Mr. Stephen Sutherland.